Topic:

Agility Patterns
At its core, Agile is less about specific practices and more about recognizing that effective development teams have certain commonalities. These commonalities often run directly counter to the reoccurring inefficiencies struggling teams face. As such, when Agile is attempted without addressing those inefficiencies, true Agility is never obtained. Fortunately, the principles of Agile lead us to Patterns which, if conscientiously applied, can solve the habitual problems.

Bio:
Alexis La Joie entered professional software development in 1997 with a unique background of political philosophy, linguistics, engineering and Pre-Med science. Along the way he picked up a Law degree and a Masters in Computing. As such, Alexis has always striven to work with technology in a way which dignifies humans, is methodical, efficient and repeatable, and holds the return of value to the client as its core objective. It is natural that such an outlook would lead him quickly to Agile. The development best practices which have come out of the Agile movement appeal to his sense of scientific rigor.

Having worked in various cultures (both in a corporate sense as well as an international sense), Alexis appreciates the ability of Agile to transform a development team's efficiency by treating them as people. At the same time, he also respects that different cultures have differing mindsets. As such, he recognizes that each Agile adoption is unique and the Agility of one may not be the Agility of another. Thus, Alexis strives to help teams achieve a democratic Agile Integration rather than an Agile tyranny.

On the development side, Alexis is strong proponent of TDD. He is also supportive of polyglot programming and evolutionary architecture to use the right tools for the most valuable solution. He is happy to return to the Milwaukee area after two and half years of coaching and developing on the team which launched the next generation Legal Research Engine: WestlawNext. Alexis is now a Sr. Software Architect and Agile Coach Consultant with Redpoint Technologies.

Agile Principle #3: Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.